gender and the curriculum...furthermore, ivinson (2014) warns that the allocation of males and...

Gender and the Curriculum

Elwood, J. (2016). Gender and the Curriculum. In D. Wyse, L. Hayward, & J. Pandya (Eds.), The SageHandbook of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment (pp. 247-262). SAGE. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-handbook-of-curriculum-pedagogy-and-assessment-2v/book242832#description

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1

Chapter 18: Gender and the curriculum

Jannette Elwooda

aSchool of Education, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.

Abstract

Curriculum resides in relationship with the concept of gender in complex and multifaceted ways.

Such a relationship acknowledges also the interconnectedness of curriculum, with assessment

and pedagogy as well as with gender and demands that we look beyond gender as ‘sex-group

differences’ to a deeper understanding of this notion as a cultural artifact, with more nuanced

and complex understandings of boys and of girls and how gender affects young people’s

identities as learners, as consumers of knowledge and skills, as well as differentially mediating

their learning and ultimately their attainment. The chapter explores how we have moved from

considerations of gender as a dichotomous variable (male/female) against which curriculum and

assessment outcomes can be measured or evaluated, into considerations of gender as a

culturally, fluid understanding of how boys and girls identify as individuals and as learners and

how they differentially interact with subjects, subject knowledge and skills, as well as how these

are taught and assessed.

Key words: gender, curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, culture, subject knowledge, sex-group,

testing.



2

Biographical Details

Jannette Elwood is Professor of Education at Queen’s University Belfast. Her main research

interests are in the social constructions and consequences of tests, examinations and

assessment practices. She is particularly interested in: socio-cultural approaches to

understanding the impact of assessment on students' lives; gender and its interaction with

assessment techniques and practices; the ethics of assessment policy and practice and

theoretical and methodological issues in educational assessment research and practice. She is

a founding member of the Association for Educational Assessment-Europe (Vice-Present

(2004-6)), an executive editor of the journal Assessment in Education (published by Taylor and

Francis) and Section Editor: Assessment and Evaluation for the online academic journal

CogentEducation www.cogentoa.com

http://www.cogentoa.com/



3

Introduction

Curriculum resides in relationship with the concept of gender in complex and multifaceted ways.

Such a relationship also acknowledges the interconnectedness of curriculum, with assessment

and pedagogy as well as with gender and demands that we look beyond gender as ‘sex-group

differences’ to a deeper understanding of this notion as a cultural artifact, with more nuanced

and complex understandings of boys and of girls and how gender affects young people’s

identities as learners, as consumers of knowledge and skills, as well as differentially mediating

their learning and ultimately their attainment. Furthermore, a consideration of gender in a

cultural sense enables us to understand that the curriculum as defined and taught is not value-

free and that subject-based curricula have associated social and cultural scripts that impact and

interact with teachers’ views of boys and girls as successful learners as well as learners’ views

of themselves and their experiences of achievement.

This chapter will start with some definitions of gender and how considerations of this term have

generated over time and moved from notions of ‘sex group’ (males compared to females) to

those of ‘gender’ that considers the processes and influences of masculinities and femininities

as they are played out within the educational and lived experiences of boys and girls. The

chapter will then consider in more detail significant issues related to gender and its interaction

with curriculum that includes notions of subjects, subject knowledge and pedagogy. Next the

significant associated practice/product of assessment and its interaction with gender, curriculum

and pedagogy is considered. Thus the chapter explores how we have moved from

considerations of gender as a dichotomous variable (male/female) against which curriculum and

assessment outcomes can be measured or evaluated, into considerations of gender as a

culturally, fluid understanding of how boys and girls identify as individuals and as learners and

how they differentially interact with subjects, subject knowledge and skills, as well as how these



4

are taught and assessed. The chapter will conclude with some remarks that suggest taking a

more nuanced, cultural position around gender, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment enables

a more humble approach to understanding boys and girls in education and how they learn and

achieve within, and beyond, culturally diverse and complex classrooms.

Gender: considerations of definitions

The underlying premise of this chapter is that gender is a contested term and that across

varying theoretical, research and practice domains there are differing interpretations of ‘gender’,

what it means, how we study it, and how it mediates our understanding of the world and our

experiences of it. The contestations surrounding gender and how it is defined are very clearly

evident within the world of education, especially within the arenas of curriculum, assessment

and pedagogy. Many years of scholarly work have shown how researchers and theorists within

these settings have come to know and understand gender and how it interacts with the

structures and functions of schooling (what is taught, what is learnt and how this is assessed)

from within very different and contrasting theoretical positions (see Skelton, Francis & Smulyan,

2006 for a comprehensive review). However, what is common across all this work is the

problematizing of ‘gender’ (however defined) within educational spheres and a search for fuller

understandings of how we come to know how the lived educational experiences of teachers and

students are mediated by gender and how this impacts on their practices and successes across

different educational phases.

Francis (2006) discusses the ways in which the concept of gender has been understood both

within wider feminist studies arenas and within the field of education. She suggests that the

concept of gender is “a recent development in the study of people and society, and has been

contested from a variety of quarters since inception” (p. 7). Much of the early work that

considered gender and achievement in schools looked to the organising categories of male/



5

female in order to understand differences in patterns of behaviour and performance between

the sexes in educational achievements (e.g. Hyde 1981; Licht & Dweck, 1983; Murphy 1982).

This tended then to define gender as ‘sex group’, which Ivinson (2014) describes as “a form of

labelling and categorising of persons as either male or female with reference to biological

classification(s)” (p. 160). Males and females then are considered to have defining and

associated characteristics that are considered, by some researchers, as fixed and unchanging,

i.e. the ‘nature’ debate around differences in performance between boys and girls. Francis

(2006) suggests that such positions prioritise gender differences in behaviours as reflecting

innate sex differences and that looking into male or female biologies and brains will provide

explanations for differences in educational achievements observed. Many studies in the 1970s

and ‘80s used ‘sex’ as a variable for analysing human behaviours ( Acker, 1981; Hammersley,

2001). In these early studies, that looked at inequalities in provision of education and schooling,

the categorising of males and females in this way played an important role in identifying

significant structural and institutional differences in the equality of opportunity for boys and girls

to avail of similar access to curriculum and assessment or qualifications provisions (see Arnot,

David & Weiner, 1996) . While many researchers still adhere to the view that the sexes are

“just naturally different” (Francis, 2006, p. 8) and also continue to use sex group as an

unproblematic and straightforward categorising variable to understand differences in

educational performances, many commentaries have emerged about the limitations of such a

definition of gender. For example, Francis (2006) reminds us that not everyone is clearly

identifiable by sex or falls easily into the categories of ‘male’ or ‘female’ for a variety of reasons.

Furthermore, Ivinson (2014) warns that the allocation of males and females to these groups

through, for example, self-reporting questionnaires or through ticking a box on a test paper,

strengthens the possibility that stereotypes are reinforced because of the use of statistical

inferences based on these categorisations to look for ‘causes’ of gender differences.



6

In contrast to those views that see gender as sex group, there are researchers who look to

social and cultural realms of knowing and understanding in order to define gender (Ivinson &

Murphy, 2007). Within these considerations, gender is seen as a concept that is socially

constructed and any differences in the behaviours observed by males and females, girls and

boys, are created by social and cultural practices and norms that influence how men/boys and

women/girls come to be and act. Thus, any differences observed in behaviours or practices

associated with boys or girls are seen as being ascribed to them within larger social

understandings of what it means to be a girl or a boy and not part of them; i.e. they are not

innate or fixed but open to change in relationship to the social, cultural and historical contexts in

which boys and girls live and learn; the ‘nurture’ debate. Francis (2006) suggests that such

positions prioritise gender relations and have replaced the terms of ‘male’ and ‘female’ with

masculinity and femininity in attempts to understand the processes of gender interaction as well

as behaviours. In advocating a more social understanding of gender, Ivinson (2014) argues that

“we cannot reduce gender to a factor or assume sex group categories (boy, girl) correspond to,

or cause, socio-cultural gender norms or masculinity and femininity” (p. 160). Thus, social and

cultural theoretical positions around gender allow for more nuanced complexities to emerge as

well as enabling considerations of how gender interacts with other factors of diversity such as

ethnicity, social class, disability, sexual identity and religion (see Chapters 19 and 20 for

discussions on the first two of these equality dimensions). Furthermore, this recognition of

multiple diversities and the impact of these on how young people construct their identities of self

and of others has led many researchers to further consider “‘masculinities’ and ‘femininities’ in

plural in order to reflect the differing ways in which masculinity and femininity are constructed

and performed by different individuals” (Francis, 2006, p. 12). Studies of gender and

education that prioritise a sociocultural definition of the concept tend in the main to be

qualitative (Ivinson, 2014; Lahelma 2014) as they focus on investigating how gender manifests

itself in everyday classrooms and schools (Murphy & Gipps, 1996) and in complex interactions

between students and students and teachers and students (Gipps, 1999; Ivinson & Murphy,



7

2007). Commonalities within these types of studies emerge around understandings of the

fluidity of gender and how “gender can act as a socio-cultural resource that can be taken up and

used by students and teachers in interactions and practices” (Ivinson, 2014, p.160).

The position of this author is that such definitions of gender, rather than seen as either/or, are

better understood as a continua of understandings of the concept that reflect theoretical

differences, with the ‘sex-group’ definition at one end and the cultural positioning of gender at

the other. Differing views of gender can themselves be seen as fluid, so that they allow

researchers to understand various formulations of the term and its manifestations within

research outcomes and narratives. By understanding the variations in how such concepts, as

gender, are understood, considered and used within theoretical, research and practice spaces,

we are better able to account for the realities we investigate and the patterns of gendered

learning and outcomes we come across. Ultimately what is advocated in this chapter is that

positions that prioritise the cultural and see gender as a social and cultural artifact, that interacts

in complex and detailed ways with how boys and girls experience education, schooling and

learning, are those that provide better understandings of the realities of students’ and teachers’

experiences. However, the chapter also recognises the place and importance of early

pioneering ‘sex-group’ studies that problematized gender-based differences in outcomes and

experiences in the first place.

Gender and the curriculum

Not only is gender a contested term, so too is ‘curriculum’. As much of the research within the

field of curriculum studies shows (the contributions in this collection included), the term

‘curriculum’ is positioned differently depending on the theoretical and ideological leanings of the



8

scholars working within the field (Scott, 2001)1. A classic definition of curriculum comes from

Lawton (1975) who argued that, rather than it being “that which is taught in classrooms” (p. 6)

curriculum is “essentially a selection from the culture of society …certain aspects of our way of

life, certain kinds of knowledge, certain attitudes and values are regarded as so important that

their transmission to the next generation is not left to chance” (p. 6). Thus across many settings

and societies, curriculum is formed, and informed, by social and cultural values, knowledge and

skills that are deemed necessary for young people to know to prepare them for future work and

life (Riddell, 1992). Curriculum then is not a fixed “‘thing’ but a ‘dynamic identity’” (Riddell, 1992,

p. 1) that is continuously influenced by the ideological positions of politicians and policymakers,

the changes in economies and societies as well as the beliefs, traditions and values of those

who teach and of those who learn.

The turning point that starts to make notions of curriculum contentious is Lawton’s consideration

of curriculum as being about ‘selection from the culture of society’ (my emphasis). It is in

relation to ‘selection’ where those who have considered gender and its interaction with

curriculum as problematic take issue; i.e. that the selection from the culture is not neutral and is

dominated by particular, powerful groups who dictate what is taught, how it is taught and also

how it is assessed. Feminist critiques of this ‘selection from the culture’ detail how traditional,

hegemonic, gendered, classed and socially elite influences of the curriculum perpetuate, leaving

the values, experiences and influences of women, and people of lower social classes and

different ethnic backgrounds unselected and invisible (Apple, 1989; Gipps & Murphy, 1994;

Weiner, 1994). As Weiner (1994) has argued, the curriculum is the site where the selection from

the culture is of crucial interest because it highlights and problematizes taken for granted

1 It is not possible in this chapter to rehearse those arguments about the nature of curriculum that other

colleagues will have covered in other chapters in this collection, so I will concentrate on arguments that specifically relate to gender and curriculum issues.



9

assumptions about knowledge, gender and culture and also mediates these assumptions within

educational institutions and classrooms. Thus curriculum is “socially constructed and as such is

both a reflection of the dominant ideas and a place where these ideas are played out or

restricted through practice...as well as implicated in the definition and construction of gendered

relations” (Weiner, 1994, p. 4) especially in how curriculum reflects or promotes gender-

appropriate behaviour and perceptions about boys and about girls and how/what they should

learn.

Gender and curriculum: subjects and subject choice

The main way in which young people experience the socially constructed curriculum in schools

is through subjects (Goodson, 1993); the ‘selection from the culture’ is formulated at policy level

and implemented at school level through subject disciplines. Whether curriculum is nationally

or locally determined, the subject-based curriculum normally and commonly reflects the main

received knowledge domains within the spheres of the sciences, arts and humanities, agreed

upon by policy makers, subject experts and learned societies - those deemed by society to have

authority in these matters for determining what is taught in schools. It is around and within

these received knowledge domains and their structure in to subjects where Weiner’s (1994) site

of curriculum contestation mainly resides as well as who is powerful in the final decisions about

what should be taught and what is deemed appropriate curricula for schools. As Goodson

(1993) argued, even the notion of ‘subjects’ assumes an agreed consensus of what these

collections of intellectual ideas and knowledge should be. Furthermore, that subject hierarchies

exists to the extent that within schools, subjects compete for status, resources and even

territory. Even with large-scale curriculum changes across many nations through the adoption of

national curriculum systems, the content and form of subjects within these systems are

perpetually contested, ideologically and politically re-formulated and continually struggled over

as to what constitutes valuable knowledge. What has emerged from contexts of socially



10

constructed curricula and subject knowledges are notions of what constitutes an appropriate

education for boys and girls and what subjects are appropriate for them to study.

While these considerations of subject appropriateness may have differed over time (Weiner

1994), there continues to be deep curriculum roots that underpin the problem of gender and

differential achievement, where particular knowledge has historically been, and continues to be,

associated with different groups (Murphy 2008). The different discourses of particular

disciplines have signalled to learners their relevance to them and legitimised learners’ choices

of particular subjects. Hence many studies have shown how subjects within the categorisations

of the sciences, mathematics and technologies have long been considered more relevant and

legitimate for males as appropriate spheres of learning, whereas subjects within the

categorisations of languages (mother tongue and foreign languages), humanities and arts are

considered more relevant and appropriate for girls (Elwood & Gipps, 1999). Patterns of

performance in international tests and assessments, such as PISA2 and TIMSS

3 tend to

reinforce these messages (Hadjar, Krolak-Schwerdt, Priem & Glock, 2014; OECD, 2015). In

these international tests of achievement, distinct patterns of performance for males and females

across time and across the subjects of language (native), maths and science have been

identified. For example, in the assessment of English language, females tend to perform better

than males in all main aspects of the subject, especially in reading and writing (Gipps & Murphy,

1994; OECD, 2004, 2015). The gaps in performance between males and females tend to show

themselves in the beginning of primary school and continue to grow until females perform better

than males to a significant degree by the end of compulsory schooling. In maths, international

surveys of achievement (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez & Chrostowski, 2004; OECD 2013, 2015)

show that on average males and females in the earlier stages of schooling perform similarly, but

as age increases, males generally tend to outperform females, and by age 15/16, males

achieve better performances in virtually all aspects of mathematics tested. In science, evidence

from large-scale assessment programs at international level show that males perform better

2 The Programme for International Student Assessment

3 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study



11

than females in science, but that the gaps in science are the smallest across the three subject

areas and are tending to close (Neuschmidt, Barth & Hastedt, 2008; OECD 2013, 2015).

Early explanations for why such differences occur tended to reflect the above premises that

different subjects are naturally suited to boys and to girls and thus sex-group outcomes in

achievement were, if not expected, then not surprising (Gipps & Murphy, 1994; Hyde, 2005;

Willigham & Cole, 1994). However, more detailed analyses that have looked at boys’ and girls’

preferences and choices within curriculum subjects have argued that perhaps the differences

observed are more to do with access to the range of curriculum subjects on offer as well as

subject choices that interact with gender-identities and how these are played out in school

rather than natural tendencies within males and females to be better at certain subjects (Murphy

& Gipps, 1998).

The propensity for subject choice to become polarized is well known (Clark & Millard, 1998;

Elwood & Gipps 1999) and affects boys and well as girls. The gendered connotations

associated with subjects outlined above, end up restricting individuals’ freedom of choice. The

‘cafeteria style’ (Riddell, 1992 p.8) selection of option choices offered to students at certain ages

of their schooling (in the UK at 14 years old) sees students selecting curriculum subjects that

show a ‘gendered spectrum’ in subject choice (Riddell, 1992, p.8) which continues to be

extremely marked and reflected through differential entry and performance outcomes across

national assessment systems (Elwood, 2005). Thus students tend to select those subjects for

which they have a preference and research has indicated that these preferences become more

gendered as age increases (Colley & Comber, 2003). While many scholars looked with

optimism to the introduction of national curricular systems to reduce gendered choices and

differential access to subjects through the compulsory study of science, arts and humanities for

both boys and girls through to school-leaving age (Paechter 2003), there is still evidence that

the gendered-spectrum of subject choices continues to exist (Lahelma, 2014). This is because



12

choices of subjects by girls and boys are seen as reflecting more than their preferences and are

more likely to be linked to broader and more prevailing influences from society and how gender

roles and beliefs are seen as manifested within the school curriculum. Ridell (1992) argued that

they reflect a complex mix of choice and coercion due to the boundaries and constraints put on

boys’ and girls’ option choices by schools, as well as reflecting ongoing processes of ‘identity

construction’ involving boys and girls, their peer groups and their social circles to the “extent

where personal curriculum represent[s] a statement of their gender identities” (p. 15).

Gender and curriculum: subjects, pedagogical values and cultural legacies

Emerging socio-cultural perspectives in relation to gender, subject knowledge and choice

suggest that the deep curriculum roots to gender and (under)achievement are more affected by

how gender values are privileged in subject communities in schools and how teachers mediate

these gender values (often unconsciously) through their own pedagogical subject knowledge

and practice (Murphy 2008). Sociocultural understandings of learning prioritize humans as

social actors who are continuously acting upon the world and who learn and come to know in

relationship; learning is between people in activity, “in and arising from the socially and culturally

structured world” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 51). Ivinson and Murphy (2007) therefore suggest

that gender in this context is an “aspect of the social order, incorporated within symbolic

networks and a dimension of social situations” (p. 7). They go on to suggest that learners are in

interaction and relation with subjects and in consequence develop identities that are shaped by

the subject settings they encounter, the different positions within subjects afforded to them

depending on whether they are a boy or a girl and the gendered, cultural legacies associated

with subjects that are replicated and mediated by both male and female teachers in the guise of

classic subject knowledge.



13

For example, Ivinson and Murphy (2007, pp. 82-83) discuss in detail teachers’ reflections on

their own pedagogical practices as they taught their subjects within single-sex classroom

settings which were formulated as a way of tackling boys’ (perceived) underachievement. The

teaching of their subject to boys and girls separately raised tensions for teachers that were

linked to their beliefs about which students legitimately belonged to their subject and how far

they felt the need to change (or not) their subject to accommodate boys or girls. In science, one

male teacher maintained the traditional beliefs and pedagogical subject knowledge of the power

of scientific method and its links with a masculine idea of science. In promoting these practices,

he tended to exclude girls from his subject and aligned his subject with boys; extending to girls

an identity of non-participation. Furthermore, in English, one female teacher, articulated her

subject’s knowledge-gender dynamic of creative writing and novels being associated with

subjective-feminine knowledge and grammar, syntax and structure being association with

objective/masculine knowledge. In aiming to include boys in what she suggested they

perceived as a predominantly female subject, she emphasized the objective/masculine

knowledge within English and changed the subject for boys, without reflecting on how such

changes again had gendered connotations of an homogenous learning preference by all boys.

So even if girls and boys are creating personalized curricula and selecting and participating in

subjects that are outside traditional gendered choices, they are still exposed to dominant gender

narratives within subjects that are drawn on by teachers’ own pedagogical practices and

discourses. Thus boys and girls may develop “different positional identities in subject settings

because they are afforded different positions within them… [which ultimately] mediates

students’ experiences of agency, and of identification, and therefore their potential to develop

expertise” (Ivinson & Murphy, 2007, p. 51). Therefore, what we learn from cultural views of

gender that prioritize the resources that masculinities and femininities present as well as



14

socioculturist views of learning is that there are more complex and nuanced understandings and

experiences of curriculum, subjects, pedagogy, gender and achievement that may account for

the differences in performance that we find on national and international assessments as well

as in school-based outcomes more generally. Another significant aspect that can be added to

this complex mix is that of assessment and its interaction with curriculum, gender and

pedagogy; how socially constructed subjects and learning are assessed and the extent to which

assessment practices and structures, in their mediation with gender, produce the differential

performance observed. It is to this aspect that I turn next.

Gender and assessment

Gender and its interaction with assessment practices and structures has a considerable history

as a focus of research (Elwood, 2010) and continues to be a very popular area of debate and

tension. As outlined above, most international assessment systems and surveys continually

promote comparisons between the overall performances of boys and girls and many nations

also publish national assessment results by gender which become the focus of various

commentaries (media- and policy-based) as to why such differences (which are quite large in

some subjects) occur (Elwood 2005; Mills & Keddie 2010; Lehelma 2014). Thus our definitions

and understandings of achievement/underachievement and our knowledge as to whether one

gender is performing better or worse than another perpetually emerge from the outcomes of

large-scale assessment systems that end up providing powerful, symbolic messages to policy

makers, schools, teachers, students and parents that become the perceived reality about what

boys and girls know, as well as the ‘truth’ as to who is over/under achieving

So for example, in the jurisdictions in which I research and work, the main national

assessment/examination systems at 16 and 18 are the General Certificate of Secondary

Education (GCSE) and the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (A level)



15

respectively. These are taken by young people across England, Northern Ireland and Wales4

and the benchmark of success in these examinations is for young people to obtain grades A*-C

and to do so in at least 5 subjects (including English and mathematics). If we take gender as a

dichotomous variable and review outcome data across all major examining organisations within

these jurisdictions for GCSEs and A Levels at these benchmarks then some very significant

patterns emerge. The results for 2014 are as follows:

▪ Slightly more females than males were entered for GCSEs - 51 per cent of the entry for

GCSE were female;

• Females obtained more GCSEs than males at the benchmark level – 9.4 per cent more

females obtained GCSEs at grades A*-C compared to males

• More females were entered for A levels - 54 per cent of A level entrants were female

• Females obtained more A levels than males at the benchmark level – 4.9 per cent more

females obtained A levels at grades A*-C compared to males

(JCGQ 20014a; 20014b).

These figures are for 2014 only but patterns over time show that entry figures for GCSEs have

increased for males and females generally, but the difference in the entry ratio has remained

relatively stable with slightly more girls being entered than boys even though they make up a

smaller percentage than males of the 16-year-old cohort (Stobart, Elwood & Quinlan, 1992).

The patterns of outcomes at this level have also remained constant, with girls achieving at least

8% or 9% more GCSEs at the higher levels than boys. Entry figures for A level have changed

dramatically over the last 40 years or so. In 1970, only 30% of the entry for A level was female,

compared in 2014 with 54%. Result patterns too have changed at A level with females now

obtaining more A levels at the benchmark levels compared with their male counterparts, who

had been ahead in results terms in the 1980s and 1990s (Elwood 2005). In looking at these

4 These are 3 of the 4 constituent countries of the UK, the other being Scotland. It has a different

education and assessment/examining system



16

types of overall statistics over time and for present day, they do present some every large

differences in entry and result patterns between the two groups that might well be cause for

concern. Taken at face value they suggest a number of things: (i) that not all boys are

performing as well as all girls and may well be at a disadvantage when it comes to obtaining

those qualifications that are needed for career and educational advancement; and (ii) that all

girls are obtaining more qualifications at the end of compulsory and advanced stages of

schooling and may be advantaged by the examination systems in obtaining more valuable

qualifications that they can trade for university and college places. However, as many of my

own and others’ analyses have shown (Connolly, 2006; Elwood, 1995 & 2005; Strand, 2014)

such interpretations belie the complexities of factors and processes going on behind these

statistics which can impact on the differences observed. I have argued elsewhere (Elwood

1995, 2005; Elwood & Gipps, 1999; Elwood & Murphy 2002; Stobart et al., 1992,) that much is

hidden behind these overall statistics and that more in-depth investigations into these types of

statistics reveal very different patterns of results that demand that we look into: the ‘types’ of

girls and boys that are being entered (looking at higher achieving students, plus their ethic and

social backgrounds) and indeed, not entered; the patterns of results that occur within girl

groupings and with boy groupings across class and ethnic minority categorisations (which end

up being of more significance) and to what is going on at individual grade level as well as the

formats of assessment that are being used within large scale examination systems that may

well produce the differential achievement noted above.

Responses to these perceived gender disparities in national assessment and qualifications like

those presented above, have been policy and research agendas both nationally and

internationally that have focused on the raising of boys’ achievements. While the rhetoric with

regard to both large- and small-scale educational innovations implemented since the late 1990s

has been about the raising of standards for all children, research has shown that many such

innovations, across many jurisdictions have been primarily geared towards solutions to boys’



17

underachievement (Younger, Warrington & McLellan, 2005). To accompany these disparities in

achievement that seem to favour girls and disenfranchise boys, there have been associated

discourses that created new gender stereotypes in education. The discourses surrounding

boys suggest that they are: problem boys, poor boys, damaged boys, boys at the mercy of

feminist teachers and boys outperformed by girls (Epstein, Elwood, Hey & Maw, 1998; Mills &

Kerrie, 2010; Ivinson 2014; Lehelma 2014). Whereas the discourses surrounding girls suggest

that they are: overachieving winners in the qualifications market place, of excessive value to

schools in terms of raising examinations success and the direct beneficiaries of the ‘girl power’

movement with girls’ (perceived) greater visibilities and freedoms (Ball & Gewirtz, 1997; Epstein

et al., 1998; Elwood, 2005; Hadjar et al., 2014; Ringrose 2007). However, rather than being

helpful, these types of discourses tend only to obscure the more complex stories that lie behind

them, some of which have been outlined above in terms of curriculum and its interaction with

gender. As the sections above have indicated, many researchers have looked into the

complexities of curriculum and teaching, as well as into boys and girls themselves in terms of

attitudes, perspectives and identities, to understand why these differences in achievement exist

(Zyngiar 2009 ). For those of us who are interested in the field of gender and assessment,

there is considerable interest in how the assessment practices and processes themselves

interact with boys’ and girls’ learning, identities and educational experiences that may create the

differences observed.

Understandings of assessment

Across the field of assessment there are differing understandings (old established ones and

new emerging ones) of what assessment is, what it does and what its purposes should be

(Black 1999). These differing understandings emerge from a range of theoretical approaches

that underpin the development of assessment systems and which are aligned to different views

of what learning is, how it happens and how it then should be assessed (Murphy 1998); in this

way considerations of assessment are shifting and reflect re-considerations within the fields of

gender and /or curriculum that have been discussed earlier. A long-standing and historically



18

predominant theoretical position within assessment is the traditional psychometric model with its

associated understandings of learning, which articulate the presence of underlying, fixed

psychological attributes that can be observed and evaluated through responses to test items.

Within this tradition assessment is considered something that is done to the individual to

measure that individual’s learning (the behaviourist approach) (Elwood, 2006; James 2006).

This approach also assumes that assessments are activities that take place in isolation from the

teacher and other learners and that assessment tasks are neutral, stable across learners and

the testing system itself has no influence on the performances observed (Elwood & Murphy

2015). Here the premise is that tests or examinations are independently checking up on a

student’s ability - what students can do on their own. The psychometric tradition is still very

powerful in the field of assessment (Elwood & Murphy, 2015; Lemann, 2000) as systems move

from nation-centric affairs into the global enterprise of international surveys and comparisons

(such as PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS5) with the associated influences of international bodies (such

as OECD) to determine almost all forms of international assessments.

More recent considerations of assessment reflect on it as a more social and cultural

construction. This is particularly observed within those re-emerging debates that suggest that

more formative approaches to assessment will improve students’ learning (Black & Wiliam

1998, 2005; Darling-Hammond et al., 2013; Shepard 2000). Within this position, assessment

(mostly formative assessment carried out in classrooms, by teachers, with and for students’

learning) is promoted as something that will enhance student attainment and develop teachers’

own assessment practice (the social constructivist approach) (Elwood, 2006; James 2006).

Further debates within the field of assessment, place emphasis on the culturally mediated

nature of assessment (Cowie & Moreland, 2015; Hickey 2015). Within this emerging position,

assessment is seen as a process inherently facilitated by cultural actors, where the very

complex interactions of assessment, curriculum and pedagogy are considered fundamental to

5 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study



19

understand how learning happens and the cultural and social contexts within which assessment

takes place are prioritized (Fleer, 2015). Acknowledging and understanding the relationships

that occur within cultural settings (e.g. classrooms) between teacher and student, and student

with student, is key in comprehending the mediation of learning in such settings (the socio-

cultural approach) (Elwood, 2006; James 2006; Willis, 2011).

These fluctuating views of assessment and associated alternative views of learning (Elwood

2006) are aligned with the shifting views of gender and curriculum outlined above. So within

the psychometric tradition, the notion of gender as ‘sex-group’ is dominant. Within the social

constructivist tradition gender as well as assessment are considered as social constructs where

aspects of assessment techniques and structures interact with gender and impact on how boys

and girls understand what is necessary from them for a successful response. From the socio-

cultural perspective, gender and assessment are considered as cultural artifacts with more

complex relationships in practice. Such relationships show gender manifesting itself in everyday

classrooms in ways that reflect how it is in the world more generally, how it is played out by girls and

boys in their lives and how it then impacts on their learning. Thus the educational experiences of

boys and girls of the subjects they study, the assessments they encounter and the contexts in

which all of this happens, are not gender neutral, but are profoundly impacted upon by the

social roles and identities taken up by boys and girls and by their teachers. All of which

ultimately has influence on educational success.

Gender and assessment: sex group differences defining achievement

As outlined above, early research into differences between boys’ and girls’ achievements on

tests and assessments considered the sex-group of the candidate as a key variable in helping

to understand differential achievement and discrimination between learner groups in education

more generally (see Gipps & Murphy 1994 and Willingham & Cole, 1997 for comprehensive

overviews). Analyses of assessment outcomes in these studies used the definition of gender as

a static, fixed, dichotomous variable (male/female) against which results could be analyzed and



20

reported. Such analyses were helpful and valuable to establish a field of research into

differential achievement, and to explore what was happening to girls’ and boys’ performances

on national and international tests such as those discussed above. Much of the drive for this

type of analysis emerged from early feminist research that highlighted inequalities in many

areas of schooling, not least in terms of curriculum access and exposure (Epstein, Elwood, Hay

& Maw, 1998) but also in terms of access to examinations and thus to successful, higher level

qualifications on leaving school (Murphy & Elwood, 1998; Stobart et al., 1992).

Such sex-group analyses from the UK allowed those inequalities in entries for examinations as

well as in final outcomes outlined above to be better investigated which suggested that unequal

opportunities for girls and boys perpetuated in terms of curriculum exposure and teachers’

decision making around access and entry to particular subjects (Stobart et al., 1992; Elwood,

1995). Research in the field of gender and assessment has greatly benefited from these types

of analyses, especially as much of the data can now be disaggregated at a number of levels –

the test as a whole, the test papers and other assessment components, and the test questions

in terms of mode of response and content and skills sampled from the domain. Such analyses

have enhanced our knowledge of stable patterns of differences in performances between boys

and girls. They have also allowed us to monitor patterns of performance across different types

of assessment and have enabled researchers to pursue questions of fairness and equity at

system and policy levels.

Limitations of such approaches and analyses, however, have become more evident in relation

to trying to understand why such patterns persist and researchers who reject the more

psychometric traditions with regard to views of learning and assessment have been forced to

rethink their reliance on such analyses alone (Elwood & Murphy, 2015). For example, one

major limitation is that such approaches focus on differences between girls and boys that are

actually small or of little significance (in statistical terms). Differences between boys and girls

across many tests actually show an overlap on performance while there are bigger differences



21

occurring within female and within male groupings (Hyde, 2005). Data analyses by a

dichotomous male/female variable can only show us what is happening in relation differential

performance across any one test or set of tests, but cannot offer illuminative reasons as to ‘why’

such differences occur. It becomes difficult to extract whether the differences observed are an

artifact of the assessment itself or whether there is fundamentally something more important

interacting with the assessment experiences of boys and girls more generally. A further

limitation is that single variable analyses means that data are being considered along one

dimension only, i.e. sex group. With the development of more sophisticated, multidimensional

analyses, it is the intersectionality of gender with other social variables such as ethnicity and

social class that needs to be the focus of future analyses so that more profound presentations

of differential achievement might become the norm (Strand, 2014). Such analyses would enable

multilayered questions to be answered such as why is it that boys and girls from similar social

classes and/or ethnic minority backgrounds perform so differently on assessments of

educational achievement; what are the factors that might lead to children, even from the same

families, to so disparately achieve when their educational circumstances (school attended,

opportunities to learn etc.) might be considered almost identical.

Gender and assessment: as social and cultural concepts in interaction

There is a considerable body of research in the area of gender and assessment that has taken

seriously the limitations of the ‘gender as sex-group variable’ approach outlined above and has

developed alternative frameworks within which to consider the interaction of assessment and

gender (Elwood 2006). Within these arenas gender and assessment are positioned as socially

and culturally constructed and are in much more complicated relationship to one another. Thus

gender interacts, not only with assessment techniques, structures and systems (at the

summative level) but also with assessment practice carried out between the teacher and

student and/or peer and the context in which it occurs (at the formative level) (Elwood 2006;

Elwood & Murphy 2015; Murphy, 1999, 2008; Ivinson & Murphy, 2007).



22

In terms of summative assessment, research has considered the social nature of assessment

structures and techniques to help understand why differences between boys and girls occur

within assessment systems (Gipps & Murphy, 1994; Stobart, et al., 1992; Elwood 1995 & 2005;

Willingham & Cole, 1997). Factors identified from various research studies have shown that

gender interacts significantly and consistently with aspects of assessment practices that show

the latter to be more socially fluid in reality. For example, research has explored the interaction

of gender with: the mode of response of test items (multiple-choice vs open ended

responses)(Beller & Gafni, 1996; Murphy 1992); the degree of students’ familiarity with the

assessment items and tasks (Willingham & Cole, 1997); the choice of curriculum content

selected from subject domains to be assessed (White, 1996); the use of context in assessment

items and tasks (Boaler, 1994); teacher-assessed components of national assessment systems

(also known as coursework or school-based assessment)(Elwood 2005); and the use of

different levels of assessment with restricted grade ranges within the same qualification (known

as tiering or targeted assessment)(Elwood 1995; Quingping He, Opposs, Glanville & Lampreia-

Carvalho 2015; Stobart et al., 1992). What is common from this body of research is that not

only do different assessment structures, components and techniques not operate in practice in

the same way for boys and as they do for girls, but that boys and girls pay very different

attention to different assessment tasks and formats (Murphy & Elwood, 1998) with their

preferences for dissimilar types of assessment format impacting differentially on their

achievements. Moreover, teachers also hold gendered perceptions of how different types of

assessment contribute to the final success of boys and girls (Elwood, 2005; Gipps & Murphy

1994). Thus the validity of the various assessment modes used to evaluate students’ learning

comes into question, if they interact differentially with different groups of students. I have

argued elsewhere that the social consequences of differential validity are considerable

backwash effects on boys’ and girls’ curricula experiences as well as educational successes

(Elwood, 2010).



23

Similar investigations into the interactions of gender and formative assessment are less

common in the field as this requires detailed explorations of classroom settings as well as

research approaches that investigate perspectives within teachers’ own pedagogical practices

and aim to make problematic what transpires there. Emerging interests in the field of

assessment, like those in curriculum outlined above are considering sociocultural theoretical

positions to better understand how gender is integral to students’ learning experiences and is

embedded in assessment practices and outcomes (Elwood & Murphy 2015; Ivinson & Murphy

2007; Moss et al., 2008). Views of assessment from sociocultural perspectives suggest that it

cannot be considered in isolation from the social, historical and cultural contexts in which it

occurs (Fleer 2015). Gender is part of these contexts and presents itself as a sociocultural

resource around a set of ideas, conventions and norms that boys and girls can perform and

through which their social beings are created and played out. The gendered lives of students

and their teachers are not left at the classroom door but are brought into these social situations

where relationships interact significantly with those subject-based curriculum cultural legacies

that mediate what is taught, how it is taught and how, ultimately, what is equated with

achievement. All these aspects are seen to be of importance in comprehending why boys and

girls perform differently on assessment tasks and tests.

For example, not only are boys and girls bombarded within subject cultural legacies with notions

of belonging or not to subjects (as discussed above), such legacies also contain gendered

messages about preferential ways of assessing the subject, about what knowledge equates

with success and who is more likely to be successful using preferred assessment systems.

Murphy (2008) has argued that boys and girls interact with these messages in different ways, in

relation to what they see as relevant to them and their lives and also what are gendered-

acceptable things to know and to ‘be seen to know’ within their own gendered, social identities

and what they can, and choose, to then demonstrate to know through assessment

opportunities. She has further argued that how teachers view success in the community of the

subject, its conventions, forms, practices and cultural settings can significantly influence their



24

judgments of boys’ and girls’ abilities that are then manifested in teachers’ formative

assessment outcomes (Elwood, 2006). Students themselves become agentive in how they

view, and seek success across subjects and associated assessment practices that determine

their own evaluations of how to be successful in both summative and formative assessment

situations. Definitions of under/over achievement then are entangled with teachers’ and

students’ experiences of the curriculum, learning and assessment; it is only by looking in to

these experiences in detail can we obtain a fuller understanding of now the concept of gender

plays out in the educational lives of students and teachers.

Concluding remarks

This chapter explored the concepts of gender, curriculum and assessment and attempted to

show how differing positions within each of these areas offer us a range of ways of thinking

about these concepts, as well as ways of understanding more fully boys’ and girls’ relationships

to learning identities, subject cultural legacies, pedagogical practices and assessment

techniques as they manifest themselves in educational outcomes. The growth in accountability

mechanisms with associated reporting and evaluating of performance of students by

male/female subgroups have allowed more simple comparisons of boys and girls achievements

to dominate the debates and discourses in the area of (in)equality and education (Ivinson 2014;

Lahelma, 2014). Furthermore, such reporting has led to headline figures that conceal real

stories of male and female achievements that show increases in outcomes generally, year-on-

year, for both groups as well as varying patterns of performance across subjects and at

individual grade level (Elwood, 2005; Murphy 2008). Thus those positions that see gender as

something that is fixed, curriculum and assessment as systems and practices that are neutral

and uncontested provide us with a limited, and ultimately distorted view of the educational

experiences of boys and girls and suggest that solutions to any differential access, opportunities

and/or achievements lie within the deficiencies of boys and girls themselves. Such



25

understandings “reduce gender to a matter of biology [and] sex groups are treated as

homogenous and within group diversity is ignored” (Murphy, 2008, p. 161). What is less

explored when gender is seen as a static variable are the unequal structures of schooling, the

culturally complex narratives of subjects with associated hierarchies of position and power

within curricula, and national systems of assessment that are socially and politically

manipulated as well as promote techniques that are differentially valid.

Taking the position that sees the concepts of gender, curriculum and assessment as culturally

constructed, fluid and complex, allows for more in-depth understandings and explorations of

these ideas and how they are mediated, interrelated and changed in interaction between

learners’ own educational identities and teachers’ own views of their subject positions. Many

researchers that locate themselves within the field of gender and curriculum and/or gender and

assessment are advocating such a position if we wish to fully understand curriculum,

assessment and pedagogical systems as they play out in schooling arenas. Looking into

poststructuralist ideas of masculinities/femininities, and sociocultural ideas of learning and being

will allow for better curriculum, assessment and pedagogical systems because they will reflect

the true realities of gender and of boys’ and girls’ educational experiences. The multifaceted

nature of classrooms, the involved role of subject cultural legacies, the gendered nature of

students’ and teachers’ lives, the complex relations between these actors as well as the

socially-constructed nature of assessment practice must all be recognized as playing significant

roles in the education systems we devise and support. Embedding such perspectives in the

future designs of curriculum, assessment and pedagogical systems can only improve our

knowledge of what we are attempting to do when we aim to educate boys and girls.



26

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gender and the curriculum...furthermore, ivinson (2014) warns that the allocation of males and...

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